Rud Istvan has a very instructive article at Judith Curry's Climate Etc. blog about the challenges of bring wind and solar power into use through electricity grids. Bottom line: Their intermittency greatly increases the costs of electricity while reducing its reliability, bringing threats to people's health and safety wherever they begin to make up a significant percentage of total power supplied to the grid. The higher the renewable penetration, the greater this intermittency burden becomes. … [Read more...]
Why Capitalism?
No one makes a trade unless he considers what he will receive more valuable to him than what he will pay. That’s why voluntary trades are always win-win: each party ends up with something more valuable than he’s traded away. Sometimes the benefit is simply a good feeling, such as when someone buys something from a poor salesman just to encourage him, or when she donates money. Here the good feeling and personal benefit are worth more than the money given. This helps us answer the question, … [Read more...]
Ice Ages: Our Real Climate Catastrophe
While attention worldwide focuses on manmade global warming, the risks from which are fairly small compared to the benefits of the energy use that allegedly drives it, the real risk to humanity (and the rest of the biosphere) is, as it has been throughout geologic history, from nature-made global cooling. Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer reflects on that in a recent article in American Thinker: What drew my attention to ice ages is the manuscript (Climate and Collapse) by agricultural … [Read more...]
Appalachian Astronauts
Over in Harlan, Kentucky, last month, I asked a coal miner if he dreaded heading to work in the mine each morning. No, he said. It was an adventure, sort of like being an astronaut, “going where no man had gone before.” Later in the day, a half-mile underground near Pikeville, other miners talked to me about their work. (I was there gathering material for a Southern Baptist Seminary course on work and leisure.) The four men had been at it 10, 21, 25, and 40 years. One spoke of his satisfaction … [Read more...]
Why I love Fossil Fuels
I am going to make and defend a bold and possibly controversial statement, a statement that makes me a pariah in my hometown of Seattle, where such a thing is considered the ultimate sin. What could be this outrageous statement? It is that I love fossil fuels. That right, I like the dirty and evil things that are supposedly causing Global Warming (or is it Climate Change, or is it Anthropogenic Global Climate Change). Whatever the term for that nonsense, I still love fossil fuels. I like … [Read more...]
Fear Not, Climate Alarmism Unfounded
In my position as environmental manager for one of the largest university systems in the U.S., I regularly make it a point to ask scientists and engineers working in the real world, solving real day-to-day problems and stewarding our natural resources and environment, about their professional views on the issues of climate and energy. Their responses almost uniformly reflect disagreement with, practically a disdain for, the climate alarmists’ and sustainability activists’ premise that manmade … [Read more...]
Supreme Court Vindicates Cornwall Alliance on Mercury Emissions
Monday, July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the law by imposing regulations on mercury emissions from power plants without first doing thorough benefit/cost estimates. Nearly four years ago the Cornwall Alliance published a study by environmental regulatory economics Dr. Timothy Terrell, The Cost of Good Intentions: The Ethics and Economics of the War on Conventional Energy, that made that very point. Dr. Terrell comments on the … [Read more...]
Supreme Court Gets One Right: Strikes Down EPA’s Mercury Regulation
On Tuesday, June 30, the US Supreme Court issued its decision on Michigan v. EPA, regarding the EPA’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants. Burning coal and oil releases mercury into the atmosphere, which scientists have said can eventually be absorbed into fish and thereby wind up in humans who eat the fish. Excess mercury can cause neurological damage, though there is some doubt about how much of that can be attributed to U.S. power plants. In Michigan v. EPA, the EPA claimed … [Read more...]
Why do I Think Climate Alarmists Are Overreacting?
Religion Dispatches posted Jacob J. Erickson’s interesting article “Falling in Love with the Earth: Francis’ Faithful Ecology,” about a week ago, and one follower, “Whiskyjack,” chastened Catholic Republican Presidential candidates for hypocrisy on the grounds that they accept his authority on abortion and homosexuality but not on climate change. I replied: Catholic dogma holds that papal authority is only in matters of faith (doctrine) and morals. It doesn't extend to science, economics, or … [Read more...]
Estimates of climate sensitivity falling
Just came across this, and it's stunning. Those who charge CAGW skeptics with being anti-science need to take a look at this and consider carefully: Who's been trending right about how much warming comes from adding CO2 to the atmosphere? For in-depth discussion, see Nicholas Lewis, "Pitfalls in climate sensitivity estimation," Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Featured image from https://landshape.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/6921/. … [Read more...]
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